Yellow Cab Company

The company's meteoric success also invited bitter competition on the city's streets, leading to a period known as the "Taxi Wars."

These cabs differed from earlier Walden W. Shaw livery vehicles in that they were purpose-built as taxis and painted yellow for maximum visibility.

Shaw and Hertz designed the Yellow Cabs themselves to be tough and lightweight, to improve fuel efficiency and reduce operating costs.

Charles McCulloch, the manager of that division, continued in that role at Yellow Cab and joined the Board of Directors of the Walden W. Shaw Corporation.

[6] This began a period of particularly bitter relations between Yellow Cab and Checker Taxi which led to shootings, targeted murders and firebombings.

[3] This period eventually led to the involvement in the taxi industry of mobsters associated with the Chicago Outfit and other powerful gangs during Prohibition.

In some cities such as Pittsburgh, Yellow Cab even changed their business model to match ridesharing services by using a smartphone app and converted their drivers from employees to independent contractors while still being able to hail a taxicab in the traditional sense.